


down to the last bone

by darkangel0410



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Background Relationships, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Scent Marking, Scenting, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkangel0410/pseuds/darkangel0410
Summary: Jack doesn't really meet McDavid until they're both playing at the U18's in Finland. He's heard of him, of course, everyone has, and they've run into each other on-ice, but nothing more than that.
Relationships: Jack Eichel/Connor McDavid
Comments: 15
Kudos: 125





	down to the last bone

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just need to write McEichel shapeshifter fic, enjoy!

Jack doesn't really meet McDavid until they're both playing at the U18's in Finland. He's heard of him, of course, everyone has, and they've run into each other on-ice, but nothing more than that; Jack's had McDavid's name linked to his by reporters and the internet for years by now, he's mostly used to it. Mostly.

They've got everyone in the same hotel again, same as always, and Jack would have thought they'd have learned after last year when there was a ball hockey game that got out of hand and ended up breaking the wall. In their defense, Jack was pretty sure none of them had expected the wall to break just from checking a couple people into it; all it took was a few friendly checks and the wall had given up with a loud crash that had all of them scrambling to run back to their rooms before hotel security or whoever showed up.

Jack's rooming with Hanny, again same as he always does when the two of them are at a tournament together; he's pretty sure that it's the coach's way of giving him someone familiar to help his panther settle down faster. It's sound thinking, and probably works well with wolves, but cats are less inclined to be as dependent on familiar people and surroundings as other shifters. Jack appreciates it, though, because his cat might not care either way, but he likes Hanny's laid back personality and the fact that he doesn't care if Jack lounges around as a panther sometimes.

He wonders idly if they would have tried to fit Matts in there with them if he hadn’t broken his leg last week during practice; there weren’t a ton of shifters in program this year, but Matts was alright for a tiger. They got along pretty well and they sure as hell could have used him out on the ice. Jack didn’t envy whoever ended up looking after him for the two weeks it took for his leg to heal up: no hockey, no shifting, he was going to be a pain in the ass.

Jack's on his stomach, texting his mom to let her know they got settled in, when Hanny's phone goes off and he makes an interested noise as he checks it.

"Stromer and Davo want to hang out," Hanny informs him, adding with a smirk when he gets another text, "they've got vodka, a bunch of it. You up for some company?"

"Sure," Jack shrugs and put his phone on the nightstand. "You and McDavid are the ones who are going to have to skate hungover tomorrow, not me."

Hanny snorts but doesn't otherwise acknowledge Jack's comment, just goes back to his phone.

Jack rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling; he's never actually hung out with McDavid before, he wasn't here last year and Jack wouldn't say he's concerned, not really. More like wary.

It only takes about ten minutes for them to show up, Hanny greeting them like they've been friends for years. And, hell, maybe they had, Hanny seemed to know everyone and had an effortless way of acting like he was best friends with every single person he ran into. Jack envies him that ease, sometimes. He was more cautious than that, always had been. He didn't know if it was his cat or just the way he was regardless, but it took him time to warm up to people. There were exceptions but Jack was almost always slow to make friends.

Jack had never been able to explain to anyone who wasn't a shifter what it was like to have a different side, one that was a part of him but also completely it's own person. His cat was part of him, more than his looks were even, as big a part of him as his love of hockey was -an integral part of who he is that he can't imagine being without. 

Most of the time, they were in sync with their desires and needs -to win, to be the best, was something they both wanted, the two of them united in the knowledge of their own talent and worth. His cat loved being better than everyone around them, a sense of smugness that echoed Jack's own healthy ego.

But there were times, here and there, where a person or thing caught his cat's eye and he _wanted_: to bite someone, to sleep in the grass under that tree, to stalk that person who smelled like death and disease, and Jack had to either dig in his heels or go along with it.

As soon as McDavid came in the room, Jack feels his cat stir, press up against his skin; he can smell him from the bed: sweat and mint and old hockey gear, and something else that made him want to get closer, press his nose in the hollow of McDavid's throat so he could memorize it, get to know it better. The scent of another shifter over all of it: a mark of possession that makes Jack want to bare his teeth and snarl, his cat bristles with the implication that someone was that close to what was _theirs_.

_No,_, Jack tells his cat firmly, pushing back when it presses incessantly forward, trying to shift. _After practice tomorrow, I promise we'll go find somewhere to hunt and then nap in the sun for a little bit_.

_Now_, his panther demands, and Jack can feel his body tensing up, trying to force the change. _Mine. Ours. Want. Now._

Jack grits his teeth and forces his cat back, exerting a control over it that was harder than usual. His cat recedes with a sulky sounding growl but Jack isn't dumb enough to think that was going to be the end of this tonight.

"Eichs," Hanny says and it makes Jack startle as he focuses back on the room; he sounds worried and Jack wonders how long he tried to get his attention. "You ok, dude?"

"Yeah," Jack tells him, trying to smile. "Just shifter stuff, I'm fine," he adds when Hanny doesn't look convinced.

"Hey, do you need us to split?" Hanny asks, disbelief turning to concern immediately. "We can go drink somewhere else if you need to shift or whatever."

He should say yes, Jack knows; it would be smarter, better, to distance himself from McDavid until he figures out what the hell is going on but he shakes his head anyways, and Hanny shrugs after a second and ushers McDavid and Strome the rest of the way inside.

_Pretty_, his cat purrs when McDavid smiles at them, shyer than Jack would have thought he would be. _Keep._

_What? No, we are not keeping him, we don't even like him. Stop it, I'm not -_

"Jack, man, come on, sit up so Davo doesn't have to sit on the floor," Hanny tells him, interrupting Jack's internal debate. 

"I can sit on the floor, it's no big deal," McDavid says, his voice softer than Jack remembers it being -of course, until now, Jack's only ever heard him yelling on ice, so he doesn't really have an accurate gauge of Connor freaking McDavid's vocal range. 

Jack sits up and moves so he's at the end of the bed and McDavid can be by the headboard. 

"Please, Eichs wasn't raised by wolves," Hanny tells them, smirking a little at the way Strome moves uncomfortably on his bed. "Alright, boys, let's see what you got at the packie."

Strome rolls his eyes but opens the backpack they brought and pulls out a couple bottles of Absolut; Jack picks up some noises that tell him there's probably more bottles inside the bag. "I don't know what the fuck a 'packie' is -is that even English, Hanny?- but one of the equipment guys grabbed it for us. We don't drink much usually, but Davo was worried they'd end up drug testing us, so vodka it was."

McDavid shrugs when Jack looks at him with his eyebrows raised; he blushes a little, but sounds unapologetic when he says, "Like any of us wants to risk getting kicked off our teams."

"Raspberry and Bubblegum, I love Bubblegum," Hanny says, without a trace of mockery in his voice. "Wicked good choices, guys. Here, Eichs, do the taste test."

Hannyhands over the Bubblegum vodka and just the smell alone makes him wrinkle his nose, but Jack gamely takes a sip and has to force himself not to spit it back out.

Hanny laughs but gives him the second bottle and nods when Jack drinks it without any faces. "Awesome, you guys get the Raspberry then and we'll split the other one -unless you want to switch, Davo?"

"No, I'll stay here," McDavid says, the words almost running into each other in his rush to get them out; he blushes at the exasperated look Strome throws him and Jack finds himself eyeing the way it turns even his neck red. He mentally shakes his head, unsettled by his thoughts and the way it makes his cat try to get closer to the surface.

Jack takes a long drink of the vodka, trying to take his mind off of the whole mess; he passes the bottle to McDavid after a second because he does have some manners. 

"I was, uh, wondering if you always have to do the taste testing thing?" McDavid asks, low enough that Hanny at least can't hear him over his argument with Strome about exactly what they're going to do while they drink. 

Jack wants to answer scathingly, be as big of a dickhead as he knows he's capable of, but there's something about the way McDavid looks at him, still flushed from his earlier embarrassment, but earnest in spite of that, like he's really fucking curious about what Jack does every day.

"Not always, no," Jack answers, trying not to focus on the way McDavid's drinking out of the bottle; his cat's already too eager to get near McDavid for whatever reason, Jack doesn't need to encourage it. "Sometimes if something's wicked sweet anyway, it tastes weird to me and I can't eat it without getting nauseous. Alcohol makes it worse, so.

"You going to drink all of that, McDavid?" Jack complains without any real anger, just trying to deflect attention away from himself.

"You should call me 'Connor'," McDavid says as he hands the vodka back; he meets Jack's eyes easily despite the way his hand's fisted in the bedspread. "'McDavid' sounds like we're enemies or you hate me, and you -you don't hate me, right?"

Jack takes a deep breath, aware of McDavid's -_Connor's_\- eyes on him, how easy it would be to lie, to make things so much easier for himself, but he's never taken the easy road in anything, not when it mattered. And he might not understand why, and he definitely didn't like it, but the suggestion of Jack disliking Connor was enough to make both him and his cat unhappy.

"No, man, I don't hate you," Jack tells him, unable to keep the slight growl out of his voice; Connor either doesn't care or can't hear it because he just grins at Jack, way happier than the situation calls for in Jack's opinion.

"I don't really know you," Jack adds after a long minute where they just stare at each other; Connor's still looking at him and smiling, his hand finally relaxed against the bed. His cat was preening at being the focus of Connor's undivided attention, rumbling happily and trying to make Jack move closer, so he was touching Connor. 

"Yeah, but we can get to know each other, right?" Connor asks, his eyes wide and still so damn earnest that Jack's beginning to think it's his default setting.

Jack's saved from answering when Hanny and Strome finish their arguing and Hanny's pulling his laptop out of his bag to start up Netflix. "Shut it, Stromer, we're watching _Boondock Saints_," Hanny tells him, setting his laptop up on the dresser across from them. "And taking a drink anytime someone says 'fuck', it's wicked easy to get even Jack drunk that way."

Connor makes a face and Jack can't resist elbowing him and teasing, "What's wrong, Connor, too Canadian to hear the word ‘fuck’ that often? Is Canada gonna revoke your citizenship when they find out?”

Hanny grins and fist bumps him on his way back onto his bed while Connor and Strome start protesting over each other.

It doesn’t take long for them to finish the first two bottles and move onto the other ones Strome has in his backpack; by the time the movie’s nearing the final courtroom scene, even Jack is buzzed and feeling it. He's not sure if Strome is yet, but he's relaxed on Hanny's bed and smiling, so Jack thinks it's a good bet that he's probably at least halfway there.

Connor’s leaning against the headboard, smiling easily and attempting to tell Jack something that Jack honestly isn’t really listening to; drinking probably wasn’t his best idea, Jack admits to himself a little hazily. His cat was just as incessant as before and now Jack was too buzzed to really put up a fight when it tries to nudge him closer to Connor. 

“You smell so good,” Jack tells him, interrupting whatever story Connor was telling; it’s too easy to lean sideways and rest against Connor’s side, the side of his face in Connor’s hair.

“Thanks, I guess,” Connor tells him, giggling a little bit; he pats Jack’s knee easily and then leaves it there, his hand warm and it feels right, like Connor should _always_ be within touching distance.

It makes his cat rumble happily and push against his skin, wanting out _now_ and Jack’s too drunk to stop it. Jack has just enough time to roll off the bed before he shifts right next to Connor.

He hits the ground with a loud thump, his body convulsing painfully for what feels like forever and no time at all, then he’s in his cat-skin.

Everything's the same, but not really; he’s still Jack, still himself, but his human side seems far away, everything around him brighter and sharper and louder. His cat isn’t in charge, really, just like when he’s human, Jack isn’t in charge of them, but more present, has a bigger say in what they do now. He can smell Connor from down here and he smells even better than Jack remembered.

It’s always distorting being drunk as a panther, he was always more off balance than when he was drunk as a human. It took longer to coordinate his limbs with his brain and try to move accordingly. He lays there blinking for a long minute while he gets used to having this much alcohol in his system as a panther.

“Shit, where’s Jack?”

_That’s -that’s Connor_, Jack tells his panther. _He’s looking for us._

His panther preens at that realization; of course Connor is looking for them, of course he is. That’s the way it should be,their mate wanting them first.

_Wait, what_? Jack feels a distant sense of panic; he tries to shift, to move away from everything, but his cat just sniffs at him like he’s a moron. _No, he’s not -_

_Ours_, his panther tells him patiently, finally starting to move. _Belongs to us. He’s ours. We’re his._

Hanny peers down at them from the bed, his face flushed from drinking and he looks more stoned than usual. “Shit, Davo, you almost gave me a heart attack. He’s right there, he shifted ‘s all.”

Hanny reaches down and pats the top of Jack’s head, grinning at him as he rubs his ears. “Who’s the pretty kitty, huh? Is it you? It is you! It’s Jack, Jack’s so pretty.”

Jack bares his teeth at Noah’s antics but it’s mostly for show and they both know it; Jack’s purring a little and even drunk Hanny knows exactly how to scratch behind his ears to make him purr more.

_He’s such a dick_, Jack thinks fondly, relaxing a little bit so things get pleasantly fuzzy again.

_Friend_, his panther interjects as he butts his head against Hanny’s hand demandingly.

_Friend_, Jack agrees easily.

Connor’s face appears next to Noah’s after a second; it makes both Jack and his panther come to attention, his cat straightening up despite the faint look of alarm that was now on Connor’s face.

“Shit, Hanny, he’s huge,” Connor says uneasily, watching as Hanny clumsily rubs Jack’s ears and croons at him as though he were petting a house cat instead of a panther that probably outweighs all of them. "I think he's bigger than Stromer is," he adds and ignores the offended noise Strome makes at him.

“He’s just a big sweetheart, aren’t you,” Hanny coos; he sits back and almost falls off the edge before he rights himself and then pats the bed next to where Connor is. “Come on, buddy, come hang out.

"Besides, Stromer's a cat, too, isn't he? You gotta be used to having giant black cats all over the place," Hanny goes on, still petting Jack's ears and urging him up onto the bed. 

"Dude, I'm a leopard, not a panther," Strome says, annoyance clear in his voice for the first time that night, "we don't even smell the same, dumbfuck."

"One cat is the same as another," Hanny shrugs, ignores the glares that they both shoot his way; Jack growls under his breath and bites Noah's hand the same way he would when disciplining a kit: gently and without any teeth, his intent to teach and not hurt.

Strome's growl isn't as friendly and Jack thinks it's a good thing shifters don't get drunk the same way humans do or there would be a bigger mess to clean up in here than a damaged wall or two.

"Dude, that's not cool," Connor tells Hanny, the disapproval in his voice obvious even drunk as he is. "You sound like an ignorant asshole when you say shit like that, Hanafin."

There's a few seconds of silence while Hanny tries to process what just happened, his brain moving at half speed; it finally hits him, though, and he looks appalled before he leans forward towards Jack again.

"You're right, my bad," Hanny says and kisses the top of Jack's head in apology; he's sincere, even tanked and acting ridiculous, it's obvious in his voice. Jack puts some pressure on his hand again and then lets go, content that Hanny had learned his lesson.

_Kits_, his panther says indulgently, _always forget themselves, even when they should know better_.

Strome looks mollified and relaxes back on Hanny's bed, kicks him in the shin to get his attention and tells him, "Find something else to watch, asshole, before I get bored and take my vodka back."

Hanny pets Jack's ears one more time, then gets up and stumbles to his laptop, already arguing with Strome about what to watch next.

Connor smiles hesitantly at Jack and pats the bed next to him, a clear invitation that his panther has no intention of ignoring; they get on the bed less gracefully than if they were sober, but they get up next to him.

Next to each other like this, Jack has a few inches on him and the surprise on Connor's face when he leans forward to delicately sniff Connor's jaw, then just below his ear, makes Jack laugh; it translates to a happy chuffing noise that has Strome looking over at them with his eyebrows raised.

“You good over there, Davo?” Strome asks, amusement obvious in his voice.

“Yeah, I just don’t know what Jack’s doing,” Connor tells him, the words muffled by the way Jack’s panther is rubbing his head along Connor’s jaw and down his neck, and buries its nose in the hollow of Connor’s throat and inhaling deeply.

“He’s scent-marking you,” Strome snorts, like he can’t believe it’s not obvious to Connor. “He wants to make sure everyone knows you belong to him. Especially me,” he adds, sly humor in the words that Jack recognizes right away as another cat pulling his tail.

_We shouldn't_, Jack says uneasily and tries to pull them away from Connor. _He’s not ours_, he adds, even though he mostly just wants to drape himself across Connor’s lap and take a long nap.

His cat snorts and gently headbutts Connor’s shoulder until Connor takes the hint and starts petting them; hesitantly at first and then with more confidence when a loud, rumbling purr fills the room. _Mate,_ his panther repeats firmly. _ Ours_.

Jack’s not sure if it’s true or not, but it’s late and exhaustion is starting to creep up on him. _We’ll talk about it tomorrow_, he concedes and finally relaxes completely, lets himself follow his panther’s lead and sprawls over Connor’s lap, nudges his hand until he starts petting him again.

He ignores the flabbergasted look on Hanny’s face and the way Strome is laughing at him, just concentrates on the feeling of Connor’s hand in his fur; the way him and his panther are both completely at ease and comfortable, and falls asleep purring.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same 'verse as _we need just about everything_ and takes place around the same time. You don't need to read that to understand this fic, but it'll give you some background on Stromer and how mates work in this 'verse, that fic is Dylan/Ryan, so keep that in mind if you want to read it.


End file.
